Join us on November 12 at 6:30 pm for a Bay Area Tropical Forest Network (BATFN) event on conservation, health, and human rights, held at UC Berkeley’s 103 Mulford Hall.

The event will feature an interactive presentation by Shannon Randolph, an environmental anthropologist and conservation specialist with Stanford d.school training in human-centered design. She will share how she trains teams in rapid ethnography in order to understand local reasoning and cultural meaning of environmental resources relevant to conservation and zoonotic disease risk.

The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with specialists who are at the interface between conservation, health, and/or human rights in tropical forests. Panelists will include Shannon Randolph, Christopher Herndon, M.D. (President and Co-Founder, Acaté Amazon Conservation), and Adam Zuckerman (Environmental and Human Rights Campaigner, Amazon Watch).

Admission is free and open to all, with refreshments (including wine and beer) provided courtesy of the Bay Area Tropical Forest Network.

Shannon Randolph is an environmental anthropologist and conservation specialist with extensive Stanford d.school training in human-centered design. Her mission is to design a path to reduce the loss of valuable environmental and cultural resources and zoonotic disease risk in the world’s most vulnerable places. Most recently, she worked with Wildlife Conservation Society to design locally appropriate water conservation and to understand the extent and value of marine and forest resources on islands threatened by rising sea levels. She has also worked with San Francisco non-profits to design mission-aligned revenue-generating models; with Stanford’s School of Education to design user-friendly approaches to administration; and with Bay area businesses to design legal strategies for corporate lawyers. She is currently working with National Geographic to design conservation messaging for zoonotic disease-prevention related conservation. Her work area has ranged from the SF Bay area, to Oceania and Africa.

Christopher Herndon has worked over the past 15 years in some of the most remote regions of the Amazon to conduct research on the medicinal plant knowledge and healing systems of its indigenous peoples. As a medical student, he collaborated with shamans in southern Suriname to develop an innovative approach for the integration of indigenous health practices into healthcare delivery, a program that remains ongoing years after implementation. He is currently President and Co-Founder of Acaté Amazon Conservation, an on-the ground conservation organization that directly partners with the Matsés indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon. Acaté and the Matsés recently completed the Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia, a 500 page repository of ancestral healing knowledge written by elder shamans in their own language and words, the first of its kind and scope.

Adam Zuckerman has spent the last three years as Amazon Watch’s Environmental and Human Rights Campaigner. In that role Adam helps to amplify the voices of indigenous communities in the western Amazon in their fight to keep their territory free of oil operations. Prior to Amazon Watch, Adam spent years organizing with activist diaspora communities and worked for an international human rights grantmaker. Adam speaks fluent Spanish and has worked in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian, and numerous other publications.

About BATFN

BATFN is an informal social network in the Bay Area broadly interested in tropical forest conservation and ecology. We gather monthly, typically for a happy hour beverage in the Peninsula area. The event is free and we provide snacks and drinks. Think Green Drinks but with a focus on forests.

Our goal is to foster peer-to-peer networking in a relaxed atmosphere where ideas, data, and collaboration flow freely. This is a great opportunity to connect with media, scientists, economists, foundations, activists, artists and many others thinking about these issues. Everyone is welcome! It is a great way to get in touch with other people working on similar interests or to learn more about current issues and initiatives in forest conservation.